Brainstorming
by Strizzy
Summary: Luby from perspective of 16 year old daughter
1. Chapter 1

**Brainstorming**

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction, so please bear with me, and I'll try my best. Anyway, I thought that it could be interesting to try something different:-

My idea is to write from the perspective of Luka and Abby's 16-year-old daughter, who reflects on the relationship that her parents have, and the emotions that she feels during both the good times and the bad.

Chapter One – Welcome To My Life

My name is Louisa Aimee Kovac and I am 16 years old. I have a younger brother called William Phillip Kovac who is now 14 years of age. Our father is known as Dr. Luka Kovac, originally from Croatia, and our mother is Dr. Abigail Kovac (previously Lockhart), although she prefers to be known as Abby.

Both William and me were born in Chicago in the USA, however, since our parents decided that they fancied a change, we have been living in the UK for the last six years, Manchester to be precise. Mum and Dad now work at the District General Hospital for the Manchester area, however, it has taken them, and us, a while to adjust due to some 'slight' differences!

There are differences between American and British naming, and I know that Mum and Dad have struggled with this a bit at first. I have to admit that it can be quite amusing when they get blank looks from people. I still remember their first day at work over here, since Will and I went with them, anyway, they didn't have a clue where in the hospital they were going, so they asked someone if they knew where the 'ER' was. The poor guy didn't have a clue what they were talking about, until we all stumbled upon the A&E department, Accident and Emergency, and realised that the British had a completely different title for the same department of the hospital. At this point, Will and I were obviously a lot younger, Me being 10 and him being 8, and we both thought that this was hilariously funny, Mum and Dad weren't anywhere near as amused!

Back then we were such a close family; we told each other everything, and helped each other through the hard times. When I first started school in Britain, I was really badly bullied for being different, however, even though there were quite a few of my fellow students who disliked me passionately, I managed to impress my teachers, who were happy to push me hard so that I could achieve my targets. I suppose that I forgot about the bullies because I distracted myself with work. But then I had to move up to the local Comprehensive School, and I found that being intelligent made you a target for bullies, and it all started up again. I suffered really badly, a couple of times arriving home in tears, having been punched in the face, or pulled to the ground by my hair, to name some examples. Eventually, the teachers were able to stop it, but I had stopped confiding in my family quite so much, my personality was changed, and I started keeping my emotions to myself, and became afraid to accept people who teased me or wanted to get closer to me. I built a wall to protect myself from having to suffer in the same way again, little did I know that it would happen again anyway, but even closer to home this time…


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I didn't do this before, but this is my disclaimer: I don't own ER or any of it's characters, though I invented Louisa and Will

Chapter Two – Changing Relationships

I'll admit that I was so wrapped up in my own problems, that I didn't even notice the point at which my parents' relationship began to change. I really should have been able to see what was going on and at least attempt to get things back on track. How the hell didn't I notice?

Before, for as long as I can remember, Mum and Dad have been extremely close, and they were able to hold our family together by loving us, their children, and each other. They have had some pretty rough situations to deal with during the time that they have been together, or should I say since they got back together again about 17 years ago, with them having been together for about a year, 6 years before that. But back then, the timing wasn't great; Mum had just got out of a rough marriage, and Dad still hadn't come to terms with the death of the family he had in Croatia before moving to America. But they have told me that they remained friends through the 5-year gap, and close ones at that. I still can't believe how they got back together! Apparently they had a bad day at work, where my Dad had a shouting match with another doctor, Clemente I think his name was, whilst my Mum was trying to save a little girl, and he wouldn't help her. Mum was so annoyed that she paid Dad a visit after their shifts, and shouted at him, and got all upset. From what they have told me, it seems that Dad had kissed her, and one thing led to another. But then the next day they decided that they wanted to remain friends, and not sacrifice that relationship. That didn't last for long though! When their old friend Neela got married, they decided that they couldn't live without each other, and then Mum found out that she was pregnant and told Dad on Christmas Eve. They were happy then, and we used to be a happy family until a couple of years ago.

I don't know exactly when everything began to change, I didn't even realise it was happening to begin with. However, the increase in the amount of rows they had got my attention, and I started to worry about what this could mean. I don't think that the original tension was picked up on by Will as he was only 12 at the time, but even he started to pick up on what was going on when Mum and Dad began to distance themselves from each other. They started working opposite shifts, and on the occasions when they did see each other, they could only argue. This completely disrupted the way our family lived; I may say that I didn't realise that my parents' relationship was failing, but I don't think that they noticed what was happening to me at school. This was far from our normality of helping each other through, and we all knew it.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three – Depression

We all felt the effects of the tension that had developed, embedding itself within our lives. I developed a condition called Chronic Daily Headaches, for which stress can be a cause, another name for this problem being Tension Headaches, and that just says it all for me. Will doesn't talk all that much anymore, neither to me, nor my parents, nor to his teachers, nor to his friends. We are all worried about him because this isn't the Will that we all know and love, our Will never shuts up. Dad has started going walkabout, particularly if he and mum have had an argument, he seemed to be genuinely unhappy with the prospect of us all continuing our life together, he seemed to be sinking into depression. Mum, on the other hand, had barely any time to even think about the possibility of having to live without the family she had then, because she spent all of her time running around after Dad, who was trying his best to make life difficult for her. I remember one night when he managed to scare us all; he sent Mum text messages saying:

'I'm walking across the motorway…'

'…Oops…that was close…'

'…That was close…'

And the worst part was that he had actually sent the messages to Mum deliberately to scare her, and it worked. And let's just say that when he didn't come home that night, none of us knew what to think.

The mood swings were awful to deal with, because they were causing Mum, Will and I to become confused. One minute Dad would be treating us all like crap, like we were nothing important, and he didn't need us. But then the next he would break down crying, and apologise over and over, and be nice for a while, during which time he would need us. We were confused about whether he did actually need us, or should I say want us, at all, or whether he wanted out. Dad was eventually told that he had to see a doctor by his mother, and he was put on medication for depression, however, this caused him to make a huge decision that only succeeded in tearing the family apart even more…

A/N: I know that this is kind of sad at the moment, and it will continue the same way for the time being. However, I am going to get things back on track eventually.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four – Decisions

I wasn't myself anymore, but then none of us were. I mean, I know that Dad was depressed, but I would never have thought him capable of deliberately scaring us in the way in which he did. And I have always wondered how Grandma managed to persuade him to get help, and the only conclusion that I have ever been able to come up with is that she used emotional blackmail on him, just like he did to us, by telling him that he would lose another family if he carried on in the same way. Then there was Mum; I don't know if she already knew that something big was going to happen, but all of a sudden she started spending a lot more time in London visiting Auntie Neela, who moved back there to be with her family. This is probably happening because Mum needs someone to talk to, and Auntie Neela has been one of her best friends for years now, she is even my Godmother, and I guess she is the only one of Mum's old friends who is in the same country as her, even though it takes several hours on the train to get to London from Manchester. Will has started being difficult, and he and I didn't see eye-to-eye on anything, so we fought a lot more. It was more than that though, he wouldn't get up in a morning, he wouldn't go to bed when he should at night, and he ignored everything that Mum and Dad said to him, and you know what, I didn't blame him because neither of us could tell whether we were being told the truth anymore. I'll admit that I didn't talk to Mum and Dad all that much either during this period, I bottled up feelings, and stayed in my room the whole time. I wouldn't let my parents see me cry because I thought that they were too wrapped up in their own problems to be concerned about me. I became more and more withdrawn at school, yet my teachers didn't care because my work was still of the same high standard, but that was because I was using schoolwork as a distraction, a way of pretending that nothing was wrong, but everything was wrong and nobody noticed.

Dad told us that the medication for his depression was helping him to see things more clearly, and that he felt that he needed a change. One evening he sat us all down and told us that he had bought himself another house and that he was going to be moving out as soon as the people already living there moved out and he got the keys. He said that he needed his own space so that he could get his head together; he said that he couldn't help himself whilst living in the same house as Mum. That was when my world really began to fall apart because it was the first time that I feared that he didn't want anything to do with me, or Mum and Will, anymore.

Incomplete – Backstreet Boys

Empty spaces fill me up with holes

Distant faces with no place left to go

Without you within me I can't find no way

Where I'm going is anybody's guess

I've tried to go on like I never knew you

I'm awake but my world is half asleep

I pray for this heart to be unbroken

But without you all I'm going to be is incomplete


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five – Everything Changes

If I had thought that my life was bad before Dad moved out, then afterwards it was an absolute nightmare; I thought that things couldn't get much worse. I wish that I could say that I understood what was happening and why, but I honestly can't because I was the one who has been left to pick up the pieces. Everything was starting to get on top of me; I couldn't handle having Mum breaking down in front of me all of the time because it was starting to mess around with my own emotions. I had exams to sit a few months later, for which I knew that I couldn't be an emotional wreck. I felt so unsure of how things were going to turn out; would they get better or would they get worse? The problem was that this couldn't be answered until Dad had moved out, and we still didn't know when that would be.

I felt at that moment like the only thing I needed to do was cry, but how could I, and when? I was being strong for Mum, but there was nobody to be strong for me. I couldn't cry at school (though I almost did on several occasions) because how would that have looked? And I couldn't cry at home because Will would probably have laughed at me and Mum would probably have just cried more herself. It might sound really stupid, but I almost felt that if I started crying, and was unable to stop, how would I have coped then? So I was attempting to cope in the only way that I knew how, but was burying myself in schoolwork really the best way to deal with the situation? Probably not because sooner or later it was all going to come crashing down on me, and I didn't know how I could have dealt with that.

My biggest problem at that point was how to confide how I was feeling in someone. I had a friend at school who seemed to have a good idea of how emotionally unstable I was feeling at that time, and he knew that by supporting my Mum I was making myself feel even lower. But how could I have broken down in front of him? Why should he have had to deal with my problems too? But who could I confide in at home? Mum was in a bad enough way as it was, and how could I talk to Dad?


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six – Loneliness

I had some really bad days in the period between Dad's announcement and him actually moving out. I would wake up in the morning with my head banging, and then I would feel ill and often faint all day. It must have seemed like I was in a bad mood to most people, but the truth was that I was struggling to cope with everything that was going on, and I wasn't exactly feeling my best, so I was just letting everyone and everything get to me.

I would walk home from school, and I still can't express how incredibly lonely I was feeling. All I wanted to do was run away, hide and cry, yet I couldn't because I was the strong one, and if I had broken down just then, I really don't know how my Mum would have coped. I'll admit that I wasn't worried about myself at that point; it was Mum who concerned me. The worst time was probably when the friend who I walked home from school with was on holiday, because I had nobody to talk to as I don't have anyone else who walks the same way. And even if there was, I wouldn't have confided in them because the only people I could begin to trust then were my two best friends – one being the person who I would walk home with. Unbelievable as it may seem, the rest of my friends hadn't even noticed that anything seemed unusual about me, they didn't even realise that there was something wrong. And it was this that made me feel more lonely than I already felt with the distance between the members of my family.

2am – Pendragon

It's 2am and it's raining again  
And I'm feeling tired in my heart  
And I can't shift it out again  
And I know about the way it feels  
And I know just what it entails  
And we take our positions on the firing line  
It's nearly time  
It's raining again and I feel like I'm playing a part  
From the start and I feel like I'm taking apart  
The way it's been going  
When their money can talk and the rain won't stop  
And your glory days have taken a beating  
Stick around for your fortune and fame  
Put your hours in the bank of no interest claim  
In '49 when the gold rush came now it's 2001  
Some things never change  
Talk to me insecurity as it bleeds me  
But got this fire that burns  
Got a heart that just never learns  
And the fortune and the fame  
Looking back upon the days when the band couldn't play  
Take it all  
So wake up stay up you look wonderful  
Wake up take up  
Got a bitter little cocktail of our weaknesses and faults  
And we trampled it in the mud till it was emotional pulp  
It's 3am and it's raining again  
And I'm feeling tired  
Felt a little bit lucky, had a cease-fire for the night  
My magazine was running dry


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven – Health Worries

The headaches that I had constantly were causing really weird things to happen, and that was really worrying me. I got a lot of dizzy spells, often several within a day, but I was soon able to cope with this. However, there have been two occasions when the dizziness was really bad and overwhelmed me.

The first time, I walked into the kitchen, went dizzy and ended up on the floor. Dad was in the kitchen at the time and he saw me walk into the room, then I lost my balance and fell against the cooker, knocking my chin on the top on the way down. Mum and Dad took me to the hospital to find out why I had collapsed and I ended up being referred to a Neurologist who put me on to some medication and sent me for an MRI scan, which thankfully was clear.

The other time I had been to church in the morning, and then Will was playing soccer close by, so I went with Mum to watch. I was fine at church, but I started feeling off it in the car. By the time we had got to the place where Will was playing, and I had got out of the car, my legs felt like jelly, and I felt really strange, and my vision was blurry. Thankfully Mum, being a doctor, knew to sit me down with a bottle of water, and not leave me on my own. So she asked my friend's mum, who is friendly with my Mum and her son is friendly with Will, to keep an eye on me while she went to check on Will.

After the second incident, Mum took me back to the doctor, who took me off of my medication. But thank God this happened during a school holiday, because without it I felt so much worse. So when I went back to the doctor a week later, he put me back on my medication, however, he increased the dosage so I felt wiped out all of the time instead of having the headache of such a high intensity. Which was worse, I didn't know.


End file.
